In the past it has been a common practice for those wishing to carve an artistic design in the exposed surface of a piece of wood to first spend an inordinate mount of time manually drawing the pattern to be carved directly upon the face of the wood workpiece. This problem is greatly exacerbated when the pattern is highly complex and involved. Frequently, hours, days and weeks are used to produce the hand drawn pattern on the surface of the wood, prior to initiating the carving step.
It has also been, in the past, a practice to obtain a pre-existing pattern or design to be carved and to reproduce that pattern using a photocopy machine. The photocopied pattern is thereafter glued to the exposed surface of the wood workpiece, following which the carving will occur on the workpiece through the glued photocopied pattern. Primary disadvantages of this approach have been distortion, imprecision, and inaccuracies introduced during application of the photocopied pattern to the workpiece and the transference of the glue or adhesive by which the pattern photocopy is adhered to both the wood and the carving instrument. Often, the result is a contaminated as well as an inaccurate carving.